1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a carriage drive control system for a printer and, more particularly, to a carriage drive control system for a printer in which a recording head is mounted on a carriage to move the recording head for a recording scan.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a conventional carriage drive control system for a printer, the following recording scheme is very popular. A recording head is mounted on a carriage, a recording medium is set to oppose the recording head, which is reciprocated along a main scanning direction to perform recording, and, at the same time, the recording medium is fed in a subscanning direction to perform recording on the entire surface of the recording medium.
In this case, the operation range of the carriage is set slightly larger than the width of a recording medium portion to be recorded. The recording head is abruptly accelerated in an approach range where the recording head does not reach a portion to be recorded. When the speed of the recording head reaches a predetermined speed, the recording head is moved at a constant speed while recording information on the recording medium. When the recording head falls outside a recordable range, the recording head is abruptly decelerated, so that it can be returned to the home position at a high speed, thereby completing one carriage operation cycle. In an arrangement for recording information in a return or backward path in the same manner as in the forward path, the recording head is also moved at a constant speed even in the return path while recording information on a recording medium.
In a printer for recording information at a high speed, a carriage must be abruptly accelerated in an approach range. For this purpose, a large motor having a large torque must be used. To increase the speed of the carriage, a long approach range is required. Upon an increase in speed, the carriage is vibrated due to a variation in abrupt acceleration. In practice, a recordable area is an area where the vibration is already eliminated. Therefore, a considerably long approach range is required.
A deceleration range is required at a terminal end side of the recording area to decelerate the carriage. To decelerate the carriage which is moving at a high speed, a long deceleration range is also required.
As described above, the long approach range and the long deceleration range must be assured, or the large motor or a large-capacity power supply for driving this large motor or the like must be arranged. As a result, the printer becomes inevitably bulky.
In a high-speed printer, the acceleration of a carriage is large, and it is difficult to prevent the vibration of the carriage. This may cause not only degradation of the quality of a recorded image, but also vibrations of the printer main body and generation of noise.
In particular, in a printer using an ink-jet scheme as a recording scheme, the ink pressure varies depending on the acceleration, the injection state changes, and the recorded image is degraded.